


an avalanche of change (too late to pull itself together)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: their smiles shaped wrong [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Power Rangers, Power Rangers Megaforce
Genre: 74th Hunger Games, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, District 11, Emma is basically Rue, F/F, Gay Noah, Lesbian Gia, M/M, and joining District 13, running away from District 11, turns out watching your friends die in the Hunger Games isn't very fun, wlw and mlm solidarity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 06:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19987369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Home is not in a District that sent Emma and Jake to their deaths without any way to survive; it is not in a District that starved its children by denying them the fruit they harvested.It is in Noah, breathing hard at Gia’s side and the dim moonlight gleaming against his glases. It is in the tiny picture drawn by Emma for Gia in the last couple of weeks before the Reaping, now carefully carried within Gia’s jacket pocket. It is in the beat of Gia’s own heart, thumping hard against her ears.Gia is terrified about what lies ahead of them in the Wilderness, about how difficult it’s going to be to find District Thirteen on just the hints she got from Troy, but there is something warm and hard bubbling up in her chest that distracts her from the fear.Gia’s not going to let Noah or her die. Too many children have died already. The two of them are going to survive the Wilderness, going to find District Thirteen, going to stop every other child in District Eleven from dying before they have a chance to grow up.





	an avalanche of change (too late to pull itself together)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Earth" by Sleeping At Last.

_This is the house that built me_ _and I’m gonna burn it down._

_This is the river I crawled from_ _and I refuse to drown here._

_What is a home_ _if not the first place you learn to run from?_

_You’ve got to bite the hand_ _that starves you, and in doing so_

_Praise the place that birthed you._

_Birthed you fucked up._ _Birthed you ugly, and interesting,_

_and ready to scream._

**-Clementine Von Radics**

Watching her girlfriend die on national television tends to harden a girl. Gia knows this, unfortunately, from personal experience. She has to watch as the boy from One’s spear goes into Emma’s back and she collapses into the arms of Calvin, one of her two allies from Twelve. She to watch as Emma’s hand opens as she dies and her token from Gia- a ring, a promise forever unfulfilled- tumbles out.

Gia thinks that’s when she starts screaming. If she’d been out in the Town Square, she would have been whipped and shot. But because she is inside of her own house, a broken hut on the edge of the orchards, the Peacekeepers aren’t able to hear and by the time she finishes sobbing for her girlfriend, dead and unable to ever return home.

Then, less than a couple of minutes later, there’s a knock on her door. Gia gets up off of her cot- the only piece of furniture in her hut other than her shoddy oven- and heads for the door. She opens it, heart dead in her chest, to find Noah Carver, her usual partner for harvesting apples in the orchard, standing on the other side with a sack-bag stuffed full on his back. His expression is hard in a way that she has rarely seen it, and determination burns in his eyes, a determination that she normally feels but is now replaced by numbness from Emma’s death.

Gia purses her lips as Noah takes a breath. The two of them are now tied by far more than just picking apples- they are tied together by grief. Last year, Noah watched his best friend die in the Seventy Third Games, the ones before Emma’s. Jake Holling had died with an arrow in the chest from the boy from Two who’d eventually won the Games. At least Emma had died with a song from Hayley from Twelve- Jake had died with no one’s grief save Noah’s.

“I hear you know something about how to get out,” Noah says, eyes dark, and she raises an eyebrow, not yet revealing anything. No one ever talks about getting out of Eleven- the only thing beyond the fences is the wilderness betwen them and Twelve, which even Emma knows only a little about, information given to her by Troy Burrows before he was Reaped this year.

But does that matter, anymore, that she has such bare information? There is nothing left in Eleven for the two of them. Jake and Emma are dead. Eleven’s boy tribute this year, Troy, is still in, but he’s got a nasty wound from the Boy from Two and it’s unlikely that he survives, especially when he’s facing the Star-Crossed Lovers from Twelve.

Gia thinks for just a moment, mind running over the blood staining Emma’s shirt as she died, and makes up her mind. In a split-second decision, she runs around her tiny, one-room house and grabs what essentials she can. Two changes of clothes- the only clothes she owns other than the ones she’s currently wearing, what little non-perishable food she has, a ball of twine, her canteen, a threadbare blanket, her piece of flint that she was given for her ramshackle oven, the loaf of stale bread she got from the bakery yesterday, a pair of socks other than the ones she’s wearing, and the couple of forks and spoons that she owns. Not much, she knows as she stuffs it into her own sack-bag, but it’s something and her and Noah are going to need all the  _ something  _ they can get their hands on if they’re going to survive this trip into nowhere.

There’s a cold fire in her eyes when she says, “Let’s go. There’s nothing left for us here.”

Noah gives her a small, pained smile, and she knows that he understands.

Soon enough, she’ll fully process what it means to watch her girlfriend- a year younger than her, just fifteen-years-old- bleed out on the floor of a forest Arena, dead face surrounded by the flowers of Hayley from Twelve, body caressed by the musical notes of the birds that Emma had loved so much.

But for now, she and Noah have to make it out of the District. They have to slip away while the mandatory viewing is still happening, so that the Peacekeepers are focused on the Games and not on them.

So they do. That night, Gia leaves the District with Noah by her side. They sneak out that night, running to the edge of the District with nothing but the clothes and the sack-bags on their backs.

A chill goes down Gia’s spine at the same time that excitement thrums in her heart when she notices that there are no Peacekeepers at the border. It’s almost suspicious that there is no one here to stop them, but GIa’s not going to turn down any luck she can find. She and Noah sneak their way past the empty guardhouse and out into the wilderness between District Eleven and Twelve, Troy’s clues and hints sitting heavy in Gia’s mind.

Gia knows she’s never coming back to Eleven, but she doesn’t even glance behind her at the District she’s lived in for sixteen years. Home is not in a District that sent Emma and Jake to their deaths without any way to survive; it is not in a District that starved its children by denying them the fruit they harvested.

It is in Noah, breathing hard at Gia’s side and the dim moonlight gleaming against his glases. It is in the tiny picture drawn by Emma for Gia in the last couple of weeks before the Reaping, now carefully carried within Gia’s jacket pocket. It is in the beat of Gia’s own heart, thumping hard against her ears.

Gia is terrified about what lies ahead of them in the Wilderness, about how difficult it’s going to be to find District Thirteen on just the hints she got from Troy, but there is something warm and hard bubbling up in her chest that distracts her from the fear.

Anything has to be better than this. Than the fear and the grief and the heartbreak and the starvation and the pain. Than watching the people they love, year in and year out, than watching children die, either by the Games or by starvation.

Gia’s not going to let Noah or her die. Too many children have died already. The two of them are going to survive the Wilderness, going to find District Thirteen, going to stop every other child in District Eleven from dying before they have a chance to grow up.

**Author's Note:**

> Victors mentioned:  
> 73rd Games: Kevin, from District 2  
> 74th: Hayley and Calvin from District 12
> 
> Dead in the Games:  
> 73rd: Jake Holling of District 11, killed by Kevin  
> 74th: Emma Goodall, killed by the boy from One  
> 74th: Troy Burrows, killed by the boy from Two


End file.
